Liz Truss seems to be surging ahead in the Tory leadership race, leaving Sunak struggling in her wake. Defence secretary Ben Wallace and Tom Tugendhat have both come out in her favour and I imagine others who backed Sunak thinking he was the likely winner are now starting to regret it. A couple of weeks ago, Truss came last in the first televised debate on Channel 4 and looked to be out of it, but she has appealed to the party’s insatiable appetite for fantasy economics and now looks to be on course for victory.
In a demonstration of how reality can easily be bent by the dense gravity field of stupidity that passes for policy nowadays, Sunak, has had to try and compete by abandoning his own simple but over-optimistic approach and to go for genuine off-the-wall fantasies. He began his campaign by presenting himself as the adult in the room, but now looks just as delusional as Truss.
It’s like a microcosm of a general election campaign, but one where reality has been temporarily suspended and the electorate are willing to believe anything and everything the candidates offer. There are now no limits. It’s going to be a long summer with plenty of eye rolling.
Truss is on video at a hustings in Exeter last night where both candidates took it in turns to trash each other's record and that of the Tory administrations since 2010. Labour now have enough video footage to last for two or three general elections at least, Here she is in full flow:
“I’ll unleash all the opportunities of Brexit, from investment to procurement. I will get all those EU laws off our statute book by the end of 2023, and I will replace them, making us more dynamic, more competitive and more ready to attract investment.”
The opportunities she talks about are the elusive ones that Rees-Mogg was supposed to find when he was appointed Brexit opportunities minister in February. He was soon appealing to Sun and Express readers for help.
Any foreign companies thinking about investing in the UK will be horrified. They literally will have no idea between now and 2024 what the regulatory framework here will be in future.
Earlier she said she would "remove onerous EU regulations and red tape" if she becomes prime minister, again without spelling out which regulations they were.
There are apparently 2,400 EU laws still on our statute book. Full Fact have checked and discovered that on the dashboard about 400 EU laws have already been amended or repealed. I had a look and it's true. I note that 196 EU laws have been repealed but scrolling down you can see they aren't even low hanging fruit. They are either out of date or irrelevant anyway - stuff like fishing quotas in the Baltic or a discard plan for Venus shells (a type of clam found in salt waters) in certain Italian waters.
They are hardly earth shaking:
If she is elected in September, as seems likely, and assuming she starts immediately, she will have about 67 weeks to review, consult, assess, do impact assessments, draft replacements and pass new legislation where necessary. This will be at a rate of about 30 laws per week, with a reduced civil service and the outcome must improve Britain's economic performance too!
Bear in mind the Conservative party has had ten years in government and at least 20 red tape initiatives, reviews and challenges going back to 2010 but have failed to publish any list - even a top ten - of 'onerous' EU laws which are holding us back. But Truss now seems to think she can do it all in 16 months.
It is totally delusional.
She also lists the international law breaking NIP bill as one of her three greatest achievements and rules out Indyref2 saying Nicola Sturgeon is an attention seeker and she would just 'ignore' the democratically elected leader of a devolved nation. Truss is rumoured to have promised senior roles in a Truss Cabinet. to John Redwood, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lord Frost.
If Boris Johnson was bad (and he was), she will be even worse. The United Kingdom’s time is nearly over.
On this point, I noted an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday (The Fantasy of Brexit Britain Is Over) by Richard Seymour and he references the historian David Edgerton who argues that:
"... the British nation existed only for a few decades after World War II. Until then, British identity was global, pinned to its empire. It became a nation only in the postwar years, when capitalism was organized by the state and citizens were offered “cradle to grave” welfare. Since then, as national industries were sold off and the City of London took center stage, Britain has become merely a hub for multinational corporations, denuded of any wider social or civic resonance. It was the dormant British nation of the postwar era — or at least the nostalgic memory of it — that Brexit was supposed to revive.
"The exit of Mr. Johnson, Brexit’s most charmed cheerleader, marks the demise of that fantasy. In its place, unmistakable and unstinting, comes crisis."
It’s an interesting take isn't it?
In the FT Phillip Stevens has a great article - After Brexit the Tories still cannot escape EU red tape, with the sub heading, The uncomfortable truth is that Britain is now a rule-taker, not a rule-maker.
He talks of an obscure EU law banning lawnmowers. It became, he says, "a cause célèbre for the then relatively small band of Tory Eurosceptics who railed against the Maastricht treaty during the 1990s. Even some pro-Europeans were initially mystified as to why Brussels should delve so deeply into the nooks and crannies of national life.
"Douglas Hurd, the foreign secretary, ordered an investigation. Far from being an example of EU over-reach, the directive had been a British initiative. Environmentally-conscious Germany had kept out British-made lawnmowers citing “noise pollution”. By persuading Brussels to set a relatively high decibel ceiling, Britain opened up the market. The same Whitehall strategy, incidentally, led to EU legislation on motorcycle engines."
In other words it is precisely these EU regulations which provided an "opportunity" for British exporters, something which the UK will now lose as a result of Brexit. He ends:
"The uncomfortable truth is that Brexit turned Britain from a rulemaker into a rule-taker. The new prime minister can certainly scrap EU-derived legislation. Doubtless there are a handful of rules that could usefully be disposed of. But mostly, business will pay a heavy price. Whether it is lawnmowers or chemicals, the EU will continue to decide what can be sold in the single market. Britain’s economy is sliding towards recession. Strange then, that the two candidates for the premiership are promising to give it another shove in the same direction.
Rishi Sunak is offering massive income tax cuts in a last ditch attempt to sway Conservative party members. As they begin voting this week on who they think should replace Johnson as leader and prime minister, Sunak has suddenly dangled a 4 per cent cut to the 20 per cent rate, but not coming into effect until 2029. He told his Tory audience that the low corporation tax they have been offering for years has done absolutely "zilch" for the economy. Well, well, well!
These U-turns from the chancellor who put in place a National Insurance rise of 10% has been forced on him by his rival’s popularity among party faithful. Truss leads by 20 per cent or more according to some recent polls.
Sunak, supported by Jeremy Hunt, Simon Hoare, Kevin Hollinrake and the half-sensible end of the party, thinks this will increase his appeal because cutting taxes is ‘a Conservative thing to do.’ This comes out of the same evidence free, faith based policy making as Brexit itself.
